Flight Simulator. Does it help?
Hello everybody,
I'm a 15 year old boy and I've always wanted to be a pilot since I was 4. I'm studying for my GCSE's now and am predicted to get mostly A's and B's. I'm taking IB after and am taking higher physics, History and Geography. I plan to apply for either the Cathay Pacific or Dragonair cadet programmes once ive finished university. But my main question is... Do flight simulators like Microsoft flight simulator really help you to learn how to fly? I play flight simulator quite often and can do take off and landings quite easily, fly level turns etc. I did some flying lessons in a glider and one on a DR221 in the summer and I loved it. The instructors were impressed with my hand flying skills and I was even allowed to land the DR221 which I was really happy about! One thing that my instructor noticed was that I was looking at the instruments much too much, I think I learnt this from the flight simulator as the outside isn't very detailed and I'm always trying to look at the bank level, altitude etc. So do you think the improvements in actually flying the plane outweigh the bad habits you may pick up? I just don't want to carry on flying on the flight simulator and learn bad habits that might affect the way I fly later on. Sorry if this is in the wrong forum but I couldn't think of anywhere else to put it.
Thanks in advance.